Oaks senior tests her skills in biotechnology research

Alison Roy-Ting, a senior at The Oaks Academy in Spokane Valley, is not your everyday high school student.

The 17-year-old, along with other Spokane-area students, spent about four weeks in a lab at Eastern Washington University this past summer through a National Science Foundation grant, where she worked and continued to learn about the biotechnology research in Silver Valley, began by Don Lightfoot, director of biochemistry and biotechnology at EWU.

Lightfoot found an overload of toxic zinc in the environment in Silver Valley 18 years ago, where he discovered a bacteria capable of removing the toxic zinc from the environment. After his discovery, a graduate student isolated the single gene in the bacterium DNA, and it was here where Roy-Ting spent a month of her summer vacation, as well as the summer of 2007, sequencing the gene, comparing it to the DNA of other bacterias, animals, etc., through an online database.

“Honestly, I knew very little when I first started. Basically, it’s just chemistry and biology,” she said.

Roy-Ting maintains straight A’s and is taking physics and an independent robotics study course. She has up to six hours of homework on the weekends, building and programming her robot she calls Billy. She also likes history, English, basketball and is on the math team.

With the holidays fast approaching, Roy-Ting has been working hard on putting together shoe boxes full of presents for Operation Christmas Child. She’s heading the project for the second year, but she’s presented the project to teachers at the Oaks, who are working with their own students to make the project a success. She also has recruited her friends into helping her and putting together presents of their own.

Roy-Ting also is studying Chinese as an extra-curricular activity. She began learning the language her freshman year.

“Part of it is my heritage. And part of it is because it will be a useful language because of China’s growth,” she said. She has also learned Latin and Spanish since she has been a student at the Oaks.

Although she hasn’t decided where she would like to go to college, she does know she’ll probably end up majoring in the sciences and she would like to continue to do research through internships.

“I don’t really know as a career what I’m going to do yet, I just want to know as much as possible,” she said.

Roy-Ting is the daughter of Don and Heather Roy-Ting. She has a 14-year-old sister, and a dog named Shelley. They live on Spokane’s south side.